Monday, September 26, 2011

A few weeks ago, like every other card-carrying philistine, I thought Minimalism Music meant Steve Reich, Philip Glass, John Adams, In C, and La Monte Young. I knew a few other composers whose works obviously drew from minimalism, but I didn't know how to categorize them, since they often sound vastly different from each other.

The last history book on contemporary music I've read, Richard Taruskin's Music in the Late Twentieth Century, doesn't even mention this term or any of its key composers, so I guess many people are not familiar with this genre. I recommend everyone, especially those who hate or feel indifferent to minimalism, to read Kyle Gann's fascinating essays Minimal Music, Maximal Impact and A Forest from the Seeds of Minimalism. Thanks to Spotify, I listened to many of the postminimalism recordings he listed, and I compiled a sampler playlist, one track per composer, for those of you who want to explore this genre.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Postminimalism (26 track, total time: 3 hours) See track list below, composers and works are linked to official sites, Wikipedia or other informative pages. Personally I found it a thoroughly enjoyable playlist that deserves and benefits from intense repeated listens (I can only take Music For 18 Musicians once a month. Einstein On The Beach? Once a year if you mean the whole opera...), hope you like it as well, and look forward to recommendations.

P.S. My experience with postminimalism music is another example of the power of cloud services. Before Spotify, if I read about The Time Curve Preludes, I could only hear 30-seconds previews on Amazon; if I heard it on the radio (not possible where I live) and was convinced I should explore this genre, since I couldn't afford Kyle Gann's whole discography, I probably would start a discussion on Amazon's classical forum, then after hours of head-scratching I'd end up buying a couple of albums the most participators recommended.

With Spotify, now I can listen to anything that arouses my curiosity, anything I wouldn't normally buy, immediately, and even recommend to a few people who otherwise won't listen to it either. At the cost of a few imaginary CD sales, Spotify introduces this music to at least dozens (average subscribers number of my contemporary playlists) of paying listeners, and maybe even motivates a few of them to buy recordings of these composers, or go to the concert when a postminimalism pianist is in town. To me this explains Why Classical Music Needs Spotify.

Friday, September 23, 2011

The statement below was sent to me by the Spotify team yesterday. As for now I have not
seen the statement published elsewhere. I am not in any way related to
Spotify the company. For more information, please see this official page or contact people on this list.

All music streamed through Spotify is of high quality (no less than 96 kbps for mobile and 160 kbps for desktop). We have a catalog of more than 15 million tracks and more than 99.9% are available in high bitrate (320 kbps) for our Premium users. Our catalog adds an average of 10,000 new tracks daily and we add the newly added tracks as quickly as possible.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Spotify tweaked its Radio feature in the last update, removed options for "50s and earlier", (what if I only want to hear 40s bebop or 50s cool jazz on the radio?) generously gave three stations to black metal, heavy metal and death metal, (looking forward to hair metal and undead metal in the next update!) add, finally, added classical radio.

But it doesn't work. I flipped through dozens of tracks but didn't see any Mozart, Bach or Beethoven. The program was filled with Hans Zimmer, John "Jaws, not the guitar player" Williams, and Ludovico Einaudi. It's great to have a soundtrack and easy listening radio if that's what you were hoping for, and I hope Spotify can work with the classical labels to better present the real classical treasures in their catalog soon.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Upon hearing the first track of Tori Amos's new album Night of Hunters this morning, I noticed immediately it's based on one of Alkan's preludes. Later I found the whole album, or song cycle, is inspired by classical music. The only exception is Job's Coffin, mostly sang by Amos's daughter Natashya Hawley, who sounds suspiciously like Adele.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Yesterday I saw someone tweeted about a Mozart track on Spotify, and I clicked it. It's the adagio of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23, played by a unnamed pianist, a unknown conductor and a third-or-four-tier orchestra (though it's based in Berlin), from a compilation called "Mozart Through The Ages". It surprised me this track received 11 Facebook Likes. I didn't see many people "Liked" classical tracks on Spotify before.

And it irritated me that, they got the first and third movements in a wrong order. It's the fault of the compiler, not Spotify, because it's the same in Amazon and iTunes.

I understand these complications have their own audience: casual listeners who don't bother with different performers or interpretations, all they want is Mozart, the famous works, the "songs". In the age of content ownership, I totally support these listener to go for the cheap compilations, the 8-hour, 80-track "Mozart Through The Ages" sells at $8.99 in Amazon MP3, and $7.99 in iTunes. A great bargain for the right audience.

I won't ask these causal fans to spend time on figuring out which pianist's Mozart is better, that's not what they look for. But I do think it's Spotify's responsibility to keep their contents in an organized way that's easy to search and browse, and give more exposure to high quality contents and filter the white noise.

If I was Naxos or EMI, I won't be happy that "Mozart Through The Ages" received 45 Facebook Likes on Spotify, while no one Liked the equally easy-to-access, and much better quality compilations like Naxos's The Very Best Of Mozart, or EMI's Mozart Best 100. The inferior compilation is much more popular on Spotify and makes much more money.

To me it's another strange case of Gresham's law (bad money drives out good). In this scenario, most users (customers) don't know/care about the quality, it's not their fault, but the consequence is not good.

Spotify created an environment that all music are available to all users, which should be a great thing. It works perfectly for pop music, Nickelback fans search for Nickelback and get Nickelback, Nirvana fans search for Nirvana and get Nirvana, everybody's happy. Even a Pitchfork critic has no rights to force Spotify to show Nirvana to people who search for Nickelback.

But classical music is a bit different. Most works in the core repertoire have dozens, if not hundreds of different recordings, causal listeners who search for Mozart or best of Mozart on Spotify will only see an endless list of tracks that sorted by popularity. I guess few of them would scroll down some 100 times to find the high quality compilations, most likely they will just pick one album or track from the first few pages and play, and make those tracks even more popular.

So how did these recordings became more popular in the first place?

1, Spotify's problematic "What's New" page, the page that every Spotify user sees every time they login to the client. If you are a longtime user, you probably have already noticed this: every now and then, it shows another compilation of Elvis, Hank Williams, Miles Davis or Brahms. And curiously, they are almost always from totally unknown digital-only labels, which seem just want to cash-in from public domain recordings, grey market bootlegs and cheap recordings repackaged under gimmick names. It should be noted that, historical recordings are valuable, and many great classical labels like Naxos Historical and Music and Arts remaster public domain/archive recordings (many are out of print or neglected by major labels) with great care, their work should be appreciated. But what graced Spotify's What's New page were always those repackaged bargain compilations, whose sole reason for existence in the market is their low price. In another word, they have no reason to exist in Spotify's same-price-for-all platform, let alone being featured on the What's New page. But a few months ago, a series of Composers Through The Ages stuff appeared on there, got a lots of plays, and became more popular than most decent recordings, therefore occupied the first pages of search results.

A more direct example, suppose Youtube constantly features low quality/bootleg music videos of Michael Jackson on their front page, and Sony/Epic's high quality official videos are nowhere to be found in the first 10 pages of search results, what would the users and Sony feel about it?

2, Ironically, badly tagged classical albums are more competitive sometimes. When a layman searches for Mozart, which search results has the highest click through rate? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 played by Vladimir Horowitz? Horowitz who? The most popular Mozart tunes on Spotify are not played by any virtuoso from the recording era, but by a guy whose full name is "Mozart". Like this. Simple, clear, hence welcomed by many users. This is bound to happen, and would only get worse over time, if Spotify don't intervene.

I'm not saying the 45 people who Liked Mozart Through The Ages are not entitled to their music, what I purposed here is Spotify should spend a little effort on curating the contents. Though most casual fans probably can't tell the difference between Horowitz and a nobody at first, at least they won't complain if you serve them with better recordings at no cost on their part. And too many unwanted results is indeed a problem for listeners who want decent recordings but don't know how to search.

It would benefit everyone: casual fans find decent recordings with the same searches that lead them to inferior ones; better severed users become more loyal users of Spotify; decent labels make the money they deserve, no more hijacked by repackaging labels which add no value to music or Spotify.

I want to emphasis that this is not a snobbish complainant. Most sane people, including me, didn't grow up with classical music these days, and everyone should be happy and even grateful that some of them bother to search for Mozart. Spotify has done a great job making all those great music available to everyone, I just hope they can do a little more to maximise the value of the music.

And this is not a pro-monopoly argument either. Both majors and indies deserve to be treated fairly, and repackaging labels harm them both. I am all for the free market idea, if the users are fully aware of all the opinions there, and more people freely choose the recordings that I see as inferior, I won't have a problem. The problem is, currently Spotify is not a free market because of two reasons I stated above. So I think a little adjustment is in need.

In the past, most causal listeners bought cheap compilations from bargain labels and picky elites bought full price releases from decent labels. Indeed the lack of interest may be a factor that prevented the laymen to go further beyond the few albums and compilations they bought, but the price was undeniably a barrier as well. By its design Spotify should radically change the situation: now the laymen should be able to get access to decent compilations and albums that they wouldn't buy before, and can dig as deep as they want. Since everything is at the same price, the best music/recordings should win most audience and the best musicians/labels should get rewarded the most. But so far Spotify hasn't fully realized its great potential, at least in classical music and jazz. Many or most casual fans still listen to the same bargain recordings, and weirdly, the only one party that seems to benefit from this situation so far is the repackaging labels, because now they are profiting from people who won't even spend $8 on a 8-hour compilation before.

How can Spotify improve and fix the problem? Personally I'd like to see weekly or monthly charts by genres, an iTunes Store style page to browse important new releases/series and editions by genres and labels (instead of having to search for everything), and curated playlists/list of essential recordings for the most important composers (inside the client, most causal fans would never go to third party sites to look for classical music).

I also hope the labels can start to promote their contents on Spotify, most of you have more marketing power than repackaging labels, so why not use it? DG just scored a hit in the biggest playlist sharing site, with a playlist titled Classics For Work. Why not? Most of the 1,000 people who listened to that playlist probably won't listen to classical music at all if you didn't tell them classical music can increase their productivity at work, and who is to say that none of them will become a diehard Mahler fan or classical concert goer? Spotify could do a lot more for classical music, I hope both Spotify and the labels seize the opportunity, and not let the repackaging labels keep on ripping them off. Bury those labels that add no value to music, their days are numbered, just as digital content ownership. Amen.

Monday, September 12, 2011

One of the biggest problem of Spotify's social function is that you cannot browse the following list of people you follow, so discovering new friends and playlists is not easy. Below is a list of people I follow on Spotify, with their names linked to Spotify profiles. You can browse the list of public playlists they curated and subscribed to. If you want to recommend others or yourself, please leave a comment and I'll update the list. Thanks.

BridgeRecords, an independent record label based in New Rochelle, New York that specializes in 20th century classical music. They've made playlists for different categories of their catalog. Other links: Twitter, another Twitter, official site.

CantaloupeMusic, created in 2001 by the founders of Bang on a Can. "Our goal is to provide a home for music that slips between the cracks." Other links: Twitter, official site.

CBCarey, Christian Carey, composer, performer, & music theorist. Sequenza 21 Senior Editor Assistant Professor of Music at Rider University. You can discover lots of people through his profile. Other links: Twitter, Sequenza 21.

Mrmarmite, Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. His profile is not public. Playlists including: 20th C(entury) Piano. There's also a great fan-made playlist that chronicles all the music in the Radiohead office charts.

Radio4NL, classical radio in the Netherlands, playlists including top 400 classical works voted by listeners. Other links: Twitter, official site.

SteveS66, Steve Smith, Time Out New York music editor and New York Times freelance contributor. He wrote the most helpful review on Spotify for classical listeners, also curated many interesting playlists. Other links: Twitter, blog.

Tam.Pollard, A blog dedicated to the arts in Edinburgh and further afield by Tam and Finn Pollard. Through their blog I discovered the BBC Legends on Spotify. Other links: Twitter, blog.

Timrj, Tim Rutherford-Johnson, legendary blogger on experimental music and modern composition - "the music that no one else dare tell you about." Creator of the legendary playlist: Radio Rambler. Other links: Twitter, blog.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Read: A Mixed Record of Success in Addressing the Attacks on WSJ, Requiem Project: A Tribute to the Fallen and Those Who Remain: September 9-11, 2011 on WQXR, Composers on 9/11 series on NPR Classical's Deceptive Cadence, Music for 9/11 on Gramophone, Music After: Remembering 9/11 on Sequenza 21.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Sequenza 21 is the contemporary classical music community on the web, and it's review section is new music's Crawdaddy. Never heard of Crawdaddy? Well, call it the Pitchfork of classical music then, but note the difference: more often than not, you can actually learn a few things about the music that Sequenza 21 reviews, not just the reviewer's ego. In the past five years, the editors of Sequenza 21 reviewed more than 400 new releases, mostly contemporary classical music. Their choices are, naturally, a bit American-biased, nevertheless they introduced some of the most noteworthy new music that you probably wouldn't discover otherwise.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Sequenza 21: Reviewed CDs (1927 tracks, total time: 1 Week) About half of the albums are not on Spotify yet, but since the US launch, many more labels came on board, like Bridge Records whose albums were featured heavily in the reviews, so we can expect to see the playlist grows even longer soon. Albums are arranged chronologically by review dates, with the newest releases at the top. Press Ctrl (CMD)+G to browse in album view. If you want a Sequenza 21 radio, put the playlist on Shuffle.

All reviews are in this Sequenza 21 section, but they don't have a complete list in one single page, so you'd have to use the search box at the left sidebar to search for them yourselves. Kudos to Sequenza 21 and enjoy the music.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

After one of the brightest and loudest instrument in the orchestra, the trumpet, here comes the softest and gentlest one: the harp. Ruth Mar is a harpist, teacher, and designer, who "plucks strings and pushes pixels in the Pacific Northwest." She curated two excellent playlists, with works specifically written for harp - no transcriptions. Here's Ruth:

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My aim with both these playlists is to show the harp's wide range of color. The harp is often pigeonholed as a romantic, soothing instrument; but it's really capable of so much more! Check out especially the second Caplet Divertissement, Holliger Praludium, and Schafer Crown of Ariadne from the Intro list for some more unusual / percussive harp sounds. Spotify has an impressive collection of harp music from reputable artists; I've discovered several few works I'd never heard before (including the Genzmer from the chamber music list).

I tried to balance between both standard and lesser known works and feature a variety of the excellent artists on Spotify. Both lists also only include works written originally for harp.

Harp Music Intro (27 tracks, 2 hours) - A mix of solo works and concerti movements. I arranged it purely according to personal preference, rather than chronologically.

I really believe that the harp shines in chamber music. It blends beautifully with a wide spectrum of instruments and voice types; and can easily move between accompaniment and solo roles. The smaller instrumentation also allows it to be heard clearly. For this list, full works are included.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Anton Bruckner, one of the most famous late bloomers in classical music, was a peculiar guy that pops up near the top of both "composers you can't live without" and "composers you COULD live without" lists almost equally often. And he had a problem with himself.

Numerous contrasting versions and editions exist for his symphonies. Many revisions were done without his authorization but conductors perform and record them anyway. In an attempt to put everything he had done, and others had done to him, in the right place, I created a Spotify playlist that consists of every different edition of his symphonies on Spotify, with some of my favourite recordings.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Anton Bruckner: The Symphonies (216 tracks, total time: 2 days) Press Ctrl (CMD)+G to browse in album view. Many recordings are not available in the USA yet, I tried to make it more US-friendly, but checking every recording's geographic availability was too much hassle. If you would like to recommend other great Bruckner recordings or alternative choices that are available in the US, please leave a comment or send the link to me on Spotify. Thanks. I've done a playlist for Celibidache's Bruckner before, so I didn't include his recordings here. They are too special to be mixed with anything else.

If you don't want to bother with all these different versions, get Tintner's Bruckner cycle on Naxos: Bruckner: Tintner (32 tracks, 9 hours, No.3 and 4 not available) All original/standard editions, and the performances are excellent, especially the early symphonies.

I got into Bruckner through Skrowaczewski's cycle on Arte Nova, unfortunately they are not on Spotify yet. Some very fine recordings there, if you don't mind coughing and other occasional noise in this studio set.

You can also find some piano/organ transcriptions of Bruckner symphonies in my Piano Transcriptions playlist. Lastly, a surprise Bruckner cameo in the beautiful Mes beatitudes by Gerard Pesson.

About Me

Maybe everything that can be done HAS been done.
Maybe we are at a crossroads where art has exhausted itself as an imitation of life.
Maybe it is time, therefore, to allow life to become an imitation of art.
The art is in the living within our personal relationships: to reach out and touch another human soul as the great masters have touched us all.

If you want to share your playlist or just say hello, leave a comment or send me an email by clicking the image above. Thanks.

Greetings from the blogger

Hi everybody,

I am Chinese, 26 years old, have been listening to classical music for 6 years. I'm not a musician but work in the music industry, though one of my favourite quotes is Ives' "the birth of art will take place at the moment in which the last man, who is willing to make a living out of art is gone and gone forever."

In the beginning I saw the film Amadeus and was awed, then I began to build my collection started from Naxos' Mozart piano concertos. On my 20th birthday I got Bernstein's Mahler cycle with NYPO on Sony. Since then Mahler's nostalgia for a lost or never existed homeworld always moves me, you know that China is still going through the pain of a quick-paced modernization and I feel that things are changing so fast that it is almost impossible to identify myself with anything. Not many great classical concerts here in Beijing, last year I was lucky enough to attend Abbado's Mahler 4th and it will always be a very precious memory.

Recently I started to use the instant online streaming music service Spotify, it has a huge classical library, but it seems that very few people listen to classical on it. There are many Spotify playlist sharing sites, and many of them don't even have a classical section. So I started my own blog.

Besides the playlists I post, when I mention artists or recordings in the posts, most of the time I will link them to their Spotify ablums, so you can click through if you are interested.

I look forward to exchanging playlists and thoughts on classical music and other arts with you.